“Great,” Sam said, and picked up a half-built prototype of a clock.

“You’re cheery this morning.”

“Yep.”

“What the devil’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Sam snarled. “The goddamn wire took a slice out of my goddamn hand. I’m fine. Go back to bed.”

“Three ‘goddamns’ in as many minutes,” Henry said, crossing to the chair they kept the medical supplies on and tossing Sam a bandage.

“I’m fine.”

“Mm-hmm,” Henry said. “I’ll be right back.”

“I don’t need you to—”

But it was too late; Henry was gone. Sam wound the bandage around his hand with what even seemed to him like bad grace. He just wanted to be left alone with his anger—was that too much to ask? He looked at the clock and tried to remember what he’d been doing with it.

A bottle of whiskey landed in front of him, followed by a pair of boxing gloves.

“Pick,” Henry said, now perfectly and neatly dressed.

“Listen, I don’t need—”

“I’m not going to leave, so the faster you pick the faster you get to be alone.”

Sam put the clock down and looked at his options. On one hand, he could drown his sorrows in alcohol. On the other, he could pound the shit out of something.

He picked up the boxing gloves. “Fine,” he said. “But I’m not pulling my punches.”

“Only matters if they land,” Henry said.

For safety, they went to the backyard. Sam pulled the battered leather gloves on, the familiar shape of them engulfing his hands. He remembered when he’d bought them, a few months after the end of the war. He’d spent the last two years in a government-funded lab with his parents, designing rifles and artillery and other things that killed people. Benedict, eighteen months Sam’s junior, had joined as a medic on his eighteenth birthday. When the war ended six months later, he’d returned to them extremely ill, and for several godforsaken weeks they hadn’t known if he would live or die.

Sam hadn’t known what to do, but before Benedict had left he’d been an avid boxing fan. So Sam ordered a sporting-goods catalogue, and he sent off for three pairs of gloves, and the first time Benedict walked around the yard he and Henry had brought out the packages and Benedict had smiled, just a crack of the lips really, but it was the first time Sam had seen his brother’s smile in a year. And after they’d ogled over the gloves, Sam had gone into his lab and cried.